Panzerbuchse 38 (PzB 38) Anti-Tank Rifle (ATR)

The World War 2 Panzerbusche 38 series was based on the World War 1-era Mauser T-Gewehr anti-tank gun.

 Updated: 8/15/2017; Authored By Staff Writer; Content ©www.MilitaryFactory.com

The Panzerbusche 38 (PzB 38) was an early World War 2 (1939-1945) anti-tank rifle design by Gustloff Werke for use by the re-equipping German Army. B. Brauer based this design on the World War 1-era Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr which featured an artillery-like breech system. The T-Gewehr was, for all intents and purposes, the first-ever dedicated anti-tank rifle system - designed to combat the new Allied threat of World War 1, the combat "tank". Like the T-Gewehr before it, the PzB 38 operated from a manually-actuated bolt-action system and fired only individual armored piercing rounds (the weapon required manual reloading after each firing). Production was handled by the storied concern of Rheinmetall-Borsig and production histories state between 1,400 to 1,600 examples were delivered to the German Army (some sixty were available at the time of the German invasion of Poland in September of 1939). Despite its seemingly useful availability, the type was never installed as the standard German anti-tank rifle of the Army during the war. Instead, the weapon was simplified for mass production in the form of the Panzerbusche 39 (PzB 39) anti-tank rifle series to which some 25,300 examples of this type were delivered - 568 of these for the German invasion of Poland.

In service, the PzB 38 showed some promise but its complicated design and high-cost manufacturing process ensured that there would be problems in-the-field (with the complicated breech block arrangement) and production would never realistically keep up with the wartime demand. However, as the war progressed and Allied armor grew increasingly more stout, the tactical value of this prewar design grew limited in turn with capability enough against just light armored vehicles by the end.